"That is true," assented Jack, "and not the least gratifying part of the whole matter is that it isn't the unimportant who are the ones to speak respectfully of the changing ideal; in fact, the smaller a man's calibre the more sure you can be that he will cling to the established order. It is only very great men who have the courage of their intuitions long enough to prove them. Münsterberg can afford to say what he thinks. Now if I go to this meeting and tell these men that 'there are cases where a fact cannot come at all unless a preliminary faith exists in its coming,' what do you think they will say?"
Hilda smiled. "Most of them will suspect you of quoting 'Science and Health.' If they accuse you of it, read them the rest of the paragraph."
"What is it?" asked Silvia eagerly.
"I can find it in a moment," said Hilda, going to the bookshelves, and taking down a modest olive-colored volume. "Here it is. 'And where faith in a fact can help create the fact, that would be an insane logic which should say that faith running ahead of scientific evidence is the lowest kind of immorality into which a thinking being can fall. Yet such is the logic by which our scientific absolutists pretend to regulate our lives.' That is from the late Professor James, who is said to have been the profoundest thinker this country has ever produced, and he has said much more equally startling to those little minds that, like full bottles, have no room for more."
Dr. Earl threw back his head and laughed; his quandary was over, his course settled. He turned to Silvia with a genial smile. "Score one more victory for the Feminists," he said. "I wonder if there ever has been a time, anywhere on earth, where women were actually and aggressively noncombatants. The Spartan woman handing over her husband's shield is typical. Whenever and wherever there has been a cause worth fighting for, worth dying for—always and forever we can see the figure of the woman, shield on arm and javelin in hand, standing at the door of the slothful warrior's tent, calling him to action. Sometimes the eternal feminine leads on, but very frequently, I regret to say, it has to get back and drive, and sometimes if it did not kneel and push I fear the wheels of progress would not revolve at all; that we do go on, slowly and uncertainly, it is true, but that we go on at all, is due to the woman soul that will not let us waste our years in the wilderness when the land of promise is so near at hand. Ladies, I go!"
He rose as if to make good his words, but Hilda entered a peremptory negative, and it ended by his staying to dinner and spending a long and utterly delightful evening, which became in a sense the beginning of what he felt was a new epoch in his life. This was the understanding, the fellowship, the bon camaraderie that gives existence its zest and permits one to dream of life eternal without a horror of impending weariness and boredom.